It is not that the meaning cannot be explained. But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.

Before I became a writer, I was running a jazz bar in the center of Tokyo, which means that I worked in filthy air all the time late into the night. I was very excited when I started making a living out of my writing, and I decided, 'I will live in nothing but an absolutely healthy way.'

What we call the present is given shape by an accumulation of the past.

I dream. Sometimes I think that’s the only right thing to do. To dream, to live in the world of dreams. But it doesn’t last forever. Wakefulness always comes to take me back.

I always feel like I'm struggling to become someone else. Like I'm trying to find a new place, grab hold of a new life, a new personality. I guess it's part of growing up; it's also an attempt to reinvent myself.

Spending plenty of time on something can be the most sophisticated form of revenge.

Young people these days don't trust anything at all. They want to be free.